bananaquit gymnastics

So I mentioned on Tuesday that we had several hundred bananaquits acting as our alarm clock this weekend. Why? Well this tree was in flower next to our beautiful accommodation and every morning bananaquits, caribs and antillean crested hummers would descend upon it for a morning sugar rush.

Of course when you're a nectar feeder that can't hover like those fancy-dan hummingbirds you find yourself getting in some positions you might not otherwise get into.

It was really cool to watch all this from our balcony with a beer but that's not all we saw from there - there's much more exciting sightings of unbelievably rare animals to come from me - but my fiancee saw a pair of humpback whales swimming by the coast at long range on our first day (gripped? I was).

Orchid elegance

I've been rather focused on ancient plants of late, be they cycads or redwoods, to the extent that I haven't thrown up posts about many more modern plants. Chief amongst my favourites are of course the orchids and I was delighted to see a couple of species this weekend in flower. The first was what is best described as feral. It is local to the region, and perhaps even the island in question, but there seems little doubt these plants were put where they are now by the hand of man. Of course manhandling doesn't make an orchid any less elegant and Epidendrum ciliare is rather good at elegance.

Note the muted, but crisp and timeless, colour scheme coupled with extravagant shape and detail. Sheer class.

In other news I added island tick number 94 recently when a brace of red-billed tropic birds crossed our distant bows whilst riding a hobie cat near some cliffs. For those of you unfamiliar with them hobie cats are tiny sailboats - little more than a pair of outriggers with no inrigger between them and a cargo net strung accross the top. Great fun but not an ideal pelagic birding platform. I did get a photo but its too hideous to share.

Something to shout about

So my weekend away was truly, truly spectacular and I came back with some mind-numbing pleasing sightings and photos. So many in fact that I have barely begun the battle of downloading, editing and uploading everything.

Here's a photo of one of my (several hundred) alarm cl0cks from the weekend, a bananaquit who, like me, it seems has a lot to say. More soon.